Zoë Wanamaker – My Week with Marilyn, the quiddich coach in the Harry Potter
movies, David Copperfield, Wilde, Richard III, Othello and a lot of British TV
series

Michael Grandage – Madness of King George

Why? Shakespeare

Seen: twice before. Now: August 11, 2013

Again I find this Trevor
Nunn production powerful but flawed. The
flaws lie in the casting, or maybe the direction, of Desdemona mainly. Imogen
Stubbs has many good qualities and in the end here she brings some force to her
role but in her portrayal Desdemona is not strong, thoughtful, witty or
profound as Shakespeare created her. Stubbs portrays her as an anxious,
frightened deer and a silly coquettish schoolgirl. At most Othello would have
had a passing fancy for her, not a deep passion. She is too shallow to have a
passion at all.

Oh that was harsh. Perhaps unfair.

But one more objection
before going on to the film’s excellent qualities. It’s too long. The play itself is long and the length is
necessary in order to to build up the painful and very dramatic climax but it
must be done swiftly and smoothly. Here many scenes are drawn out and feel
repetitive though they are not. Cutting
a minute here and there would have been enough to tighten it up.

Now to the good stuff.
Willard White as Othello is powerful and tragic and essentially right for the
part though I must confess to a nervousness with great big guys with very deep
bass voices. He often speaks more like
an opera singer than a regular guy but when he speaks in a normal voice he is very
good.

Zoë Wanamaker is a terrific
Emilia. Her whistling and pipe smoking add to her air of independence and
sharpness in a marriage and job that puzzle and worry her. Her bitter views on
men and relationships ring absolutely true.
She is awesome.

And now we have Iago. Ian McKellen is just so…fill in here with any
superlative you want. He is completely
sickening as the jealous sexually obsessed husband, terrifying as the
manipulative false friend and utterly believable as the solicitous reluctant
informer. With the smallest of facial expressions and leers, glares and stares
directly into the camera, McKellen is the Iagoest Iago I have ever seen. He
should have gotten an Oscar and everything else available.

A word on the visual and
audio effects. Set in a Crimean-BoerWar type period, the minimalist black,
white and beige colors serve admirably to accentuate the passion and make the
black skin and white skin painfully beautiful.
The haunting cicada drone in the background throughout most (all?) of
the play subtly builds up the heat and the drama. Wise choices on Nunn’s part.

In the final act, the death
scenes themselves don’t quite come off right but the power of Shakespeare’s
words carry them through and I am, as always, left stunned and exhausted.